


Woo Me to Wayfaring

by twobirdsonesong



Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, First Meetings, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Meet-Cute, New York City, crisscolfer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris is a young author struggling to write his third novel and it's not going well at all.  It doesn't help that the new neighbor has taken to sitting on the fire escape at all hours with his guitar. It's a distraction he really doesn't need.</p><p>The other side of the story from: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2064678">The Art of Observation</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act One – When the Road Beckons

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: In this AU, Chris' sister has passed away. Her death is unspecified and does NOT occur on-page, having already happened, but the fact of it is discussed through Chris' remembrances and emotional ties.

It’s gone past sunset and there is someone singing just outside Chris’ window. A soft, warbling voice and gently plucked strings rise above the constant din of the streets below and Chris frowns.

 

For a distracted minute, Chris thinks his Pandora station has somehow wandered away from his soundtrack playlist, but when he checks, Pandora has gone to sleep anyway, waiting for him to confirm that he’s still around. But the singing continues, muffled just enough that Chris can’t quite catch the words, and the distinct smell of pot has started wafting through the open window.

 

Chris sighs, hands flexing over the keyboard he hadn’t been typing on.  A distraction like this is the last thing he needs.  He’d gotten another call the other day from his nervous agent, asking about his progress, and all he has are 76 pages he doesn’t even want to re-read himself, let alone give over to one of the people in charge of his career. He doesn’t need some bored kid outside adding to what he refuses to call writer’s block.

 

He sits up straight and a twinge races down his creaking back.  He really does need to watch his posture.  The expensive desk chair he was convinced to buy can only do so much if he sits in it like Gollum.

 

When Chris sticks his head outside, there is a man sitting on the fire escape of an apartment in the building next door, with a tiny ashtray next to him and an oddly small guitar in his hands.

 

“Do you think you could keep it down?” Chris calls out, just loud enough to get the man’s attention.

 

As he looks up, the man’s eyes are luminous in the dying light.  “Hey man, you wanna jam?”

 

Chris blinks and then straightens his shoulders. “No, I don’t want to _jam_.”  The acrid scent of pot is stronger out here and Chris wrinkles his nose.

 

The man shrugs like it’s really Chris’ loss and plucks out a few notes on what Chris finally recognizes as a ukulele. He hadn’t realized anyone actually played those outside of a college quad.  But the G sharp that twangs out, bouncing across the narrow alley to the buildings across the way, strikes its own chord of familiarity.

 

It’s the same sound he’s been hearing off and on for weeks – the thing that’s been getting under his skin and making his eye twitch.

 

New York is loud and he knows it.  When Chris crossed the country to put some distance between himself and his family, and to close the gap between his work and the world he wanted be a part of, he knew he was leaving quiet behind. In the years he’s been living in this apartment, in this decidedly subdued neighborhood, he’s grown used to the trucks and the people and the sirens that don’t care what time it is. Usually, if he needs to, he can shut his windows against the world and drown the rest out with his headphones.

 

But not this.  It’s too close, too insistent.  It’s not some distant annoyance on the street that passes by and around the corner before dissipating.  This has been right outside his window – late at night and early in the morning.  He doesn’t know why no one else has complained about this before.

 

“Are you the one who’s been out here making this noise?” Chris asks and the man shoots him a sharp look barely belied only by the softness of his cheeks.

 

“I play music.”

 

There are certain things Chris is good at. Baking chocolate chip cookies to just the right golden brown.  Getting his mom off the phone before he loses his voice.  Remembering which coffee shops to avoid on Sunday mornings if he wants to get in and out of there in less than fifteen minutes.

 

And knowing just how to hit at someone’s sorest spots with deadly accuracy. Chris swallows back his next biting comments.

 

“Why are you doing it out here?” He asks instead, gesturing to the fire escape the man is perched on.  Chris finally notices that he’s not even wearing any shoes and that his toes are very long.  And he has ridiculous hair.

 

“Well, my roommate doesn’t always appreciate my musical stylings.”

 

Chris rolls his eyes.  “I can’t imagine why not.”

 

The man with the ukulele on the fire escape says nothing, just blinks, and Chris feels shame tighten in his belly. He really needs to work on the way he talks to people.  Too often he blurts out too quickly the things he doesn’t even mean to think, let alone say.

 

“Well, can you stop?  It’s hard to concentrate.” Chris is sure every neighbor on this side of the building and across can hear them and he doesn’t want to be the next one getting yelled at.  He’s kept up fairly good relations with his neighbors over the past few years of living here – mostly by ignoring them and being ignored in return.

 

“You live in the middle of New York City,” the man points out, a smirk landing on the edges of his mouth.  “And you’re complaining about a little music being too loud?”

 

“I am when it’s right outside my window and I’m trying to work.”  Trying and failing, but this guy doesn’t need to know that.  Neither does anyone else except for his cat.  And Brian doesn’t care what he’s doing most of the time.

 

The man’s gaze flickers down Chris’ body where he’s leaning out of the window, to the ratty _Star Wars_ t-shirt he’s been wearing the last two days, and his smirk widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

 

“Oh, shut up,” Chris snaps, blush crawling across his cheeks.  “I work from home.” He doesn’t have anyone to impress, not in that regard, at least.  His cat certainly doesn’t care if he puts on decent clothes or not.

 

“I said nothing.”

 

“You didn’t have to.”  At least this guy can’t see the coffee stain on the sweat pants he’s also wearing.  The ones he’s had since high school and are so worn at the hems they’re almost embarrassing. Laundry is on his to-do list. Somewhere.  Somewhere after getting his head out of his ass and finishing his goddamn book.  So…never.

 

“I have work to do,” Chris states, not directed entirely at the man.  “Think you can keep it down?  And stop smoking right outside my window.”

 

The guy shrugs and a C minor echoes out, plucked by long fingers against the strings.  Chris wishes it sounded awful.  “We’ll see.”

 

Chris huffs and ducks back under the window frame. He considers closing the window, but it’s a nice evening out, a cooler one than it has been and Chris likes the fresher air than what’s been blowing from his AC unit all summer. And besides, he likes being able to hear _some_ life outside his apartment.  It makes him feel a somewhat less like a cave-person during the weeks he hardly leaves at all.

 

He’d never anticipated becoming an author and he’d certainly never planned for the days when he sat at his computer morning until night, forgetting that the world was carrying on past the edges of his desk. When he thinks about it now, he can’t imagine doing anything else.

 

Chris is standing close enough to the still-open window that he can hear the creaking and groaning of metal as a weight shifts before the shuffle-slide of another window closing.

 

He rolls his shoulders and turns around, back to his living room.  It strikes him then how dark his little apartment has grown as the hours slipped by while he was staring fruitlessly at his computer screen.  A flick of a switch brings up the warm light of a floor lamp and Chris glances around.

 

He’s been living in this apartment for going on three years and he realizes how little he has to show for it.  The beige walls are suddenly distressingly blank. Framed pictures sit propped against he walls, waiting to be hung on hooks.  Bookshelves are left haphazardly half-filled with packed boxes waiting at the base.  His desk is the most lived-in part of his home, an organized disaster of tea mugs and notepads and Post-Its scribbled with notes.  The apartment has a spare room meant to be an office, but the windows are too small and Chris had directed the movers to set up the heavy, old-fashioned desk in the living room, near the window where fresh air would ease across his desk.

 

A corkboard still hangs in the unused office, with the supposed timeline of his novel sketched out and pinned up on color-coded note cards.  He goes in there sometimes, to stare at the story he’s supposed to be writing – the one that’s supposed to make up for the one he already wrote.

  
Chris runs his hands through his hair.  He knows he won’t be able to get anything else done tonight, even without the twanging of music or the stench of pot invading his apartment.  Not that he was working much to begin with.  His cat is asleep on a pillow on the couch when Chris collapses down on it with a heaving sigh.  Brian doesn’t even stir or open one discontented eye at him.

 

Chris looks out the window and thinks about the guy on the fire escape.

 

***

 

When Chris was younger wanted to be an astronaut because he saw a PBS special about the Apollo 13 disaster and thought he could have done better.

 

And then his sister died.  After that his dreams fell much closer to the earth.

 

Books came when his parents left, disappearing into their grief for long, cold months.  And writing followed when the pre-imagined fantasies weren’t enough any more. The worlds weren’t right; they didn’t sing the way they were supposed to.  The heroes weren’t the ones he’d imagined with his sister. But he’d missed his chance without ever having known something was there for him to take.  He’d have to write the words down for himself if he couldn’t write them for her.

 

The first book bled itself out of him in months, words spilling across the pages, dropping like November rain. When he thinks about it now, he worries it was a fluke.

 

His second book.  Well, lightning doesn’t always strike twice.

 

***

 

Barely two days later he hears it again, a song being played just outside his window, and this time someone is humming along.   He thinks to block it out with headphones, determined to keep pretending like he’s writing, but the idea that he should have to change what he was doing because of some asshole makes him bristle.  This is _his_ home, his space he pays for, and he shouldn’t have to fight for it.  Not more than he’s already fighting himself.

 

At least the guy next door has the decency to look mildly guilty when Chris leans out of his window to glare at him.

 

“Do you mind?” Chris snaps.

 

“Not at all,” the man grins as his fingers continue their slow movements against the strings.  He has a guitar this time, instead of that ukulele, but he still looks ridiculous with his mess of hair and his dark stubble and the fact that he’s sitting on a fire escape in the middle of the city like that’s not completely _weird_.  Or dangerous.  Who knows when the last time those things were checked for structural integrity.

 

“Seriously, I’m trying to work.”

  
The man shrugs. “Then work.”

 

“This is a little distracting.”

 

For some reason that make’s the guy light up, eyes going bright and teeth white as he smiles with interest.  “So I got your attention?”

 

Chris stutters on his breath. “I.  No.  I mean, yes, but because you’re right here.  It’s kind of hard to ignore.”

 

The guy seems inordinately pleased with himself. Chris is somewhat familiar with the look – it’s the same one he remembers playing on his sister’s face whenever she got away with something Chris got blamed for. 

 

“Cool,” he says, grinning and slipping his fingers across the strings.  The notes of it sing off the brick walls, echoing across the narrow alley, and Chris suddenly wonders if anyone is watching them.  There’s very little privacy when the world lives so close.

 

“No, it’s not cool.  It’s annoying,” Chris stresses.  “Can’t you, you know, do that inside? Somewhere that’s not next to my window?”

 

The man’s eyebrows twitch.  “I don’t think you own this space.”

 

Chris breathes in sharply.  The windowsill is rough beneath his palms and the man’s eyes are very intense.  “I’m not saying that.  I’m trying to ask nicely here if you would-”

 

“Nicely?” The guy scoffs. “Before you called it noise. That’s not very nice.”

 

“It is noise!” Chris shrinks back from his own voice, too loud in the late afternoon, and the words are all wrong anyway. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

 

But the guy is already standing up, clutching his guitar in one big hand and turning away.  “Yeah, sure,” he mutters and then he’s gone, crawling back through his window and into his own apartment.

 

Chris sighs, hanging his head against the guilt that surges up his throat, before shuffling back to his living room, bypassing his desk for the soft cushions of his couch.

 

He’s never been quite adept at talking to people, not the way he wants to be.  Invariably he says something stupid or the words don’t come out quite right, somehow just left of what he really wants to say, and he ends up looking like an insensitive, thoughtless dick.  The words he wants to use are often half a step behind the ones he’s already said. It’s part of why he writes, he thinks.  He has the chance to edit.

 

After his first book came out, and after they realized it was selling, his agent had him do a book tour across the country. Nothing huge, just the major cities, but Chris spent the entire time in a blind panic. The awkwardness of an empty table set up just for him, a line of people waiting for his signature. His agent has rehearsed with him what to say, how to make things personal, but short enough to keep the line moving, but each day had been a blur.  All Chris remembers is mumbling gratitude and shaking hands and hoping that he wasn’t making a fool of himself in front of each person.

 

There was no way to explain to the people buying his book that he’d written it for his sister.  Those words were beyond the scope of a 20-second interaction. There was no way to truly tell a girl wearing a shirt that his sister had once owned how much he appreciated her buying the book and coming to see him in person.

 

“I like your shirt,” he’d said to the girl, choking on it, remember that same shirt stuffed in a laundry basket and folded in a drawer. “Thanks for coming.” The girl had smiled like it had been enough, taking the signed book into her arms, but Chris knows it hadn’t been. He should have said more, but he couldn’t.  It’s always later his tongue finds the words to use.

 

And now he has this neighbor, this guy who lives just a breath away, and Chris couldn’t find the right thing to say to him either.

  
He drags a pillow over his face, wrapping his arms around it to muffle his frustrated groan.

 

***

 

It’s not like Chris doesn’t have friends. He does.  Monday night he goes out to a late show in SoHo with someone he met in college and reconnected with the year before. Thursday he hangs out with some friends in the East Village and drinks way too much wine and has to take a taxi home. The doorman smirks at him when he drags his ass out of the cab and stumbles over nothing and Chris leans his forehead against the cool metal of the elevator as he rides up to the fifth floor.

 

Sunday he gets coffee with his editor because he doesn’t have that many friends in the city.

 

Sera meets him at a café on 2nd and when she walks in the door she brings a swirl of fall leaves with her. Chris has always admired her way of making an entrance, even if, as of late, she tends be carrying bad news with her.

 

“Christopher,” she says, sitting down across the tiny table from him.

 

“Seraphina.”

 

She rolls her eyes as she crosses her legs. “Must you?”

 

Chris just smirks and pushes a cup of coffee towards her.

 

“For me?”  She asks, taking the mug.

 

“No.”

 

Her lipstick leaves a red stain on the porcelain. “Thanks.  So, what do you need from me?  Or want?”

 

“Can’t I just want to enjoy the pleasure of your company this fine Sunday morning?”

 

The sky is a pregnant grey and it’s been trying to rain since the night before.  Gusts of wind send dead leaves skittering across the pavement and it’s the kind of day Chris knows will last for a week.

 

“You’ve never been a good liar,” Sera chides and Chris cannot deny that.

 

Chris sighs and leans back, shifting. The chairs in this café are not his favorite.  The backs are too straight and he can never quite get comfortable, but the coffee is good and the pastries even better, and it makes up for the rest.

 

“I don’t know…” _Anything_. “What to do about the book,” he admits on a rush of breath. It’s enough of the truth.  When’d he texted Sera to meet him he hadn’t really had a plan, not reason for this that he’d admitted to himself.

 

“I figured as much.” Sera pokes him with the toe of her boot underneath the table.  “Have you made any progress at all?”

 

Last week he wrote a chapter.  It took him five days and on the sixth he deleted every word of it.  He has no backup.

 

“No.”

 

Sera rests her chin on her palm and stares at him until Chris is squirming uncomfortably in his seat.  “Okay, so talk to me about it.”  There’s a reason she’s still his editor.

 

“I don’t know.  I think I’m…” _A failure. A waste.  A fraud_.  “…afraid.”

 

“Of what?”

 

Chris pushes his hands through his hair. “That it’s going to be the second book all over again.  And it’s stopping me from even starting.”

 

The astounding, wholly unexpected success of his first book had been a baffling surprise.  He’s written it with no hope, no expectation, no plan at all. He hadn’t even thought of it as a book.  His sister was gone and her body buried and all he had left was the story they never finished telling each other.

 

But he’d turned a chapter in as his senior thesis because he’d been too absorbed in his writing for his actual schoolwork. Classes don’t stop for grief. Part of him had expected to be expelled with just weeks left until graduation, or at least told he’d failed his seminar and would have to take it again in the fall. No part of him considered his advisor would have a sister who worked at a publishing house. And no part of him ever anticipated a call from an agency in New York City asking to speak to one Christopher Colfer.

 

Second star to the right dreams were for other people, people with whole families and obvious choices to make.

 

But she’d called, and Chris had answered.

 

“You know what I’m going to tell you,” Sera says.

 

“To shut up and write?”

 

“Yes, because it’s my project too,” she reminds him. “Your successes are my successes and your failures are my fault too.”

 

It’s a thing they don’t much talk about – how he hadn’t taken her advice, her guidance during the second novel, too assured of his own capabilities to turn an ear towards the woman who helped him get where he is. He’ll apologize to her one day, when the words mean something more than just _I’m sorry_.

 

“But more importantly,” Sera continues. “It’s okay to be afraid.  This business is a fucking minefield and now you know it.  So many come through with a great story under their arm, get a pile of money and a lot of praise, and are never heard from again.  Because deep down they’re _afraid_.  They’re afraid they can’t do it again, can’t recreate the thing that made they loved. And they’re right. They can’t.  _You_ can’t. It can’t be recreated. Never.  And it shouldn’t be.  You can only write a book once.  The trick is to figure out the next story you want to tell and find the way to tell _that_ story.”

 

Chris looks up from the napkin he’s slowly shredding. “And what if I only had the one story in me?”

 

It was a good one, he thinks.  And his sister would have loved it. Whatever he knows and doesn’t know, it’s one of the few things he’s certain of.

 

The look Sera levels at him from across the table is his dad and his Pee-Wee soccer coach and his second grade teacher who taught him cursive.  “You know that’s not true.”

 

Chris swallows and does not think of the document open on his laptop at home.

 

***

 

It’s another week or so of writing, editing, deleting, and re-writing and Chris is seriously considering getting a typewriter, or even just a pad of paper and pen to see if that makes a difference at all. When a low, dull-toned clanging starts up – like someone tapping against metal – Chris isn’t exactly surprised to see who it is.

 

He’s sitting on the fire escape, beer in hand while his legs dangle over the side, feet aiming six stories down.  Chris hates that he has to crane his neck to look up at this guy who lives one floor up in the building next door.

 

The man taps his beer bottle against the metal railing of the escape and that same low clanging rings out, poignant and obnoxious at the same time.

 

Chris blinks and forces himself not to smile. “So, now you’re playing drums over there?”

 

“I’ve always played drums,” the guy counters and his amusement is palpable.

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“Do you want a beer?” He asks.

 

“No, thank you,” Chris demurs, trying not to be thrown by the question.  “I’m working.”

 

The guy makes this noise – this sound that hovers somewhere between mocking disbelief and mirth – and Chris wrinkles his nose.

 

“I am,” he says, more emphatically than he intends, but probably more for his benefit than his neighbor’s.

 

“Of course you are.”

 

Chris opens his mouth to tell this guy to fuck off in gentler terms, but he finds he has no idea what he really wants to say. Because this guy isn’t wrong in his completely unsubtle insinuation.  Chris wasn’t working.  Not really.  Sitting in front of a computer listlessly tapping at keys and refreshing his Twitter feed doesn’t count as working.

 

“What’s your name?” Chris asks instead. He has to have something to call this guy that isn’t _this guy_.

 

“Darren,” he says, tipping his beer towards Chris. “At your service. And you are?”

 

“Chris. Colfer,” he adds, like it makes a difference. He doesn’t except Darren to recognize it.

 

Darren repeats his name and the sound of it rolling off his tongue does not make Chris shiver.

 

“What are you doing out here?”

 

“My roommate’s got a girl over.”

  
Chris blinks, looks between Darren and the window behind him. “So, you’re just… waiting?”

 

Darren shrugs and then pauses like something has caught his attention.  He twists and cranes back to look through the window.  “Oh, wait.  No. They’re done.”

 

Chris fumbles for something to say – mouth opening and closing in what he’s sure is a comically stupid look – and then he laughs. This kid – _Darren_ – is sitting outside on a fire escape drinking a beer while he roommate gets the run of the place to have sex.  Either Darren is the best roommate a guy could hope for, or he’s incredibly weird.  Chris isn’t entirely certain that both scenarios aren’t true.

 

Darren laughs too and Chris is struck by the odd notion to invite Darren inside.  It comes from nowhere, but his brain is spinning on the thought of Darren in his living room, sitting on his sofa, looking at his things.  What they would talk about he has no idea. He doesn’t invite people over; he doesn’t make small talk.  But for a moment he could so easily say it – could ask.

 

But he doesn’t.

 

“You could come over some time,” Darren says before lifting the bottle to his lips.  His eyes are bright and Chris does not watch his throat as he swallows.

 

“Thanks, but it looks like there isn’t even room in there for you let alone me.”

  
Darren laughs. “Eh, it’s bigger than it looks.”

  
Chris presses his lips together.  “I’m sure.”  Darren just smirks and takes another drink and Chris kind of wishes Darren would offer him a beer again so he could accept it this time.

 

“So what do you do?”  Darren asks and it’s the kind of question Chris remembers from the last time he attempted something like dating.

 

“I’m a writer.”  It still sounds so utterly implausible when he says it that the word sticks in his mouth.

 

“Cool,” nods Darren.  “Anything I’d know?”

 

Chris shrugs.  He’s never quite sure who might know his books, let alone read them.  The signings were decidedly skewed towards one demographic, though when he thinks about it, the girls who showed up would have been in his sister’s cohort.  Not for the first time he wonders what she would have thought about her brother making money off their shortened childhood.

 

“Probably not,” he says.

 

Darren just hums and doesn’t ask anything more about it. “Well, since the roomie is done, I’m going to go back inside before I freeze my balls off.”

 

Chris hadn’t noticed the cold, only the pink in Darren’s cheeks and the way his nails didn’t look bitten to the quick like Chris’ own.  It’s his _job_ to notice the details, is what he tells himself when he makes himself look away from the veins in Darren’s hands.

 

“Yeah.  Okay.”

 

“The offer still stands,” Darren says as he rises. “If you ever wanna come over and jam or hang.”  Darren pushes his window open enough to crawl through.  “Or _work_ , you know where I live.”

 

“Yeah,” Chris repeats, watching Darren slip back into his apartment, because what he thinks he might want to say gets stuck somewhere in his chest.

 

***  


The next day Chris wakes up at 7:05 am without his alarm and writes three pages he doesn’t hate.

 

And then he does his laundry.

 

***

 

Maybe it’s a cliché, but Chris likes to walk around Central Park when he gets a touch of cabin fever.  It’s not so much for inspiration but fresh perspective. Trees and grass and water instead of the blank beige walls of his apartment and the crushing obligation of his work waiting for him.

 

He’s seen dozen and dozens of buskers in the Park over the years.  Some are good, others still learning how to capture an audience.  And there are always those guys who are, well, just left of talented.

 

Chris doesn’t listen to his headphones on his walks, preferring instead to catch snippets of conversations that might eventually make their way into his dialogue.  He almost misses him, the notes of his song fading into the background as he eavesdrops on a mischievous elderly man telling a young girl that she can have a sweet treat if she doesn’t tell her mom and dad about it when they get home later.

 

But it’s Darren, standing on the edge of the winding pathway in a brightly colored shirt and no jacket with a guitar in his hands and a case at his feet.  His hair flops over his forehead as he plays some upbeat tune and Chris gets it. He does.  There’s something stupendously, effortlessly charming about him.  Some ineffable quality that makes him look approachable playing 90s pop hits for change rather than an asshole who needs to get a job.

 

There are pink-cheeked girls gathered around him, standing at the front of the gathered crowd, and Chris gets that too.

 

When Darren looks away from them, drawn by something, and sees Chris standing there, his whole face lights up, but his fingers don’t miss a note.

 

An odd feeling settles in Chris’ stomach, rooting his feet to the pavement even though his legs want to take him away. He doesn’t know this guy – not really.  He’s one of thousands living in Chris’ little corner of the city.  He’s watched musicians play before – scruffy buskers and polished performers and Broadway stars alike.  This is no different.  This man is no different.  And yet Chris cannot look away.  He’s sure he knows the song, but he hardly hears the words. He is stuck still watching Darren play – the rhythm of his hands and the joy on his wide-open and honest face as he reaches for a higher note.  He is not the best Chris has ever heard and yet he doesn’t want it to end.

 

If he closes his eyes he can see Darren center stage in front of a packed house opening night.  And if he blinks again he sees a young troubadour playing for a royal court.  If nothing else, Darren has found his way into Chris’ imagination.

 

“Can I play you a song, good sir?” Darren calls out and Chris’ flushes a violent red as the crowd turns to look at him.

 

“I don’t have any change,” he answers.

 

“This one is on me.” Darren winks, he fucking winks.

 

“You don’t have to do that,” Chris wants to say, but Darren has already broken into another song.

 

He sees people – women, men, an old lady in a shawl – dropping money into Darren’s guitar case and he wonders how much he’ll make today.  And then he wonders how much Darren makes every day.  He doesn’t know if this seemingly fancy-free street musician has a job to pay for that apartment of his or if he’s just another kid in the city living on his parents’ wages.  He can see both so clearly.  He can see Darren working two jobs to find rent every month – making coffee in the morning and waiting tables at night.  And then teaching guitar lessons to wealthy kids on the weekends, all for the chance to do whatever it is he wants to do with his life.

 

But Chris can also see Darren floating through the city on a trust fund.  Sleeping in late and staying out later.  Spending his parents’ earnings on tuition for classes he doesn’t attend while he buys drinks for people he doesn’t know.  Chris doesn’t know which is closer to the truth.

 

He waits until Darren catches his eye again to hold a hand up in farewell.  Darren exaggerates a pout, but does not stop playing while Chris turns away. It’s a long walk home, but Chris doesn’t think to take the train.

 

***

 

When Chris was younger he loved Halloween most of all.

 

Thanksgiving and Christmas meant family he only saw once a year and names he couldn’t remember, a stress-filled kitchen and food he didn’t want, and an aunt who pinched his cheeks like it was something people really did outside of holiday movies.

 

And after his sister died, it all got so much worse. The endless sympathy. The eggshells everyone walked on. The way the stilted silences said so much.

 

But before – before Halloween was the best.

 

In the years before he knew what writing could do, Halloween was his chance stretch the parts of him that needed more than algebra and geography to be satisfied.  He could dress up in whatever costume he wanted and act out whatever story was in his head. He could _be_ whatever he wanted.  For that night he wasn’t just Chris.  He was _more_.

 

But like everything else in his life, Halloween changed too.

 

When he wakes up that October 31st, he doesn’t remember what day it is. Not right away.  There are no decorations about his apartment and it’s not like he’s going to any parties.  He sleeps in a little and when he finally rolls out of bed his one consolation to the season is the bag of pumpkin spice coffee he bought from the store. As the smell of it brewing fills the kitchen, Chris leans against the counter and closes his eyes.

 

He doesn’t miss her every day, not anymore. The soul deep pain of it has faded with the years.  But it returns now and again, brought screaming to the surface by the things she touched, the things she loved.  Chris hasn’t been able to watch _Hocus Pocus_ since it happened.

 

He writes a little that day, between pacing the length of his apartment as his cat watches him and staring at the empty stretch of wall that was always supposed to have another bookshelf.  He’d had all these plans for his home when he moved on, buoyed by the cash from his book deal and the fat checks rolling in on the sales. The books are there, though, taped up in boxes on the floor where the extra bookcases were intended to go.

 

But he writes that day.  Four pages he doesn’t delete.

 

If some men measure their lives in coffee spoons, Chris measures his in pages.

 

The first book came like drowning.  Ragging gasping paragraphs that choked him until they were on the page.  He hardly remembers writing it, just knows that when it was done he could breathe for the first time since she died.  Whatever it was, whatever he did, resonated with people in a way he never understood. But it meant he could move to New York. It was more than enough.

 

The second book was like skipping stones across a pond. Carefree and easy, but just as fleeting. The reviews were the worst part of the whole thing. That the book didn’t sell hurt his bank account and his pride, but the reviews hurt his soul.  Disappointing, they said.  Lacking heart, they sighed.  A failed attempt at making lightning strike twice, they shrugged.  And worse of all he cannot say that they were wrong.  He’d written with vanity that time, too assured of his own skill to try the way he could.  And it had shown.

 

But he writes four pages that day and that’s something to celebrate in his own way.

 

The evening is settling in when Chris hears something shuffling and shifting at his living room window.  He frowns, but gets up from the couch, mind racing with all of the possibilities.  He knows the smart thing to do would not be to approach a potentially dangerous situation. But he’s five floors up and it’s not like someone is going to Spider-Man up the façade and randomly picked his apartment to rob.

 

When he pulls the blinds up what he sees is exactly the last thing he expects.

 

Sitting on the wide ledge he keeps potted flowers on during the spring and summer is a perfectly round and orange pumpkin.

 

Chris blinks.  A face has been carved into the pumpkin with care, if not complete skill, and a candle is burning merrily inside.  No matter how ridiculous it is there is only one explanation for this.

  
Chris throws the window open and leans out, but Darren isn’t perched on the fire escape. Disappointment floods Chris’ belly, but the sight of the pumpkin and its cheerful face makes him smile.

 

“I know you did this,” he calls out into the night, but no one answers.

 

He’s careful when he brings the pumpkin inside, not wanting the candle to splutter out.  He supposes it would be better to leave it outside, but he wants to enjoy it. It’s been so long since he’s had one.

 

Chris sits on the couch and stares at the flickering firelight through the pumpkin’s wide, happy grin.

 

***

 

At six years old, Chris’ sister tried to fly.

 

Their backyard had a tall tree with low branches and she’d always had a fascination with birds.

 

She’d laughed at the emergency room when Chris had told her that the doctor was going to clip her wings when he put the cast on her arm.

 

But the thud of her body hitting the rain soft ground and the scream that punctuated the late afternoon echoed across the pages of the book Chris wrote more than a decade later.


	2. Act Two – Woo Me to Wayfaring

The afternoon is cold and windy and it’s been flurrying snow for hours when Chris rushes down into the subway.  Normally he walks when he can, happy to stretch his legs, but it’s too damn cold and he’s not wearing the right shoes for the weather. His socks are already getting damp and he hates that.  And it would be hell to try and catch a cab now, when everyone else in the city is fighting for them.

  
Someone is playing music somewhere in the station, some peppy pop tune with a familiar chord progression.  This time, Chris recognizes his hair first.  He sees the mess of dark curls in the distance just before he catches the increasingly familiar voice rising over the hustle of the flowing crowds. And of course he’s playing right at the entrance to the platform of the line Chris needs to get home.

  
People aren’t stopping to watch and listen to Darren play the way they did that afternoon in Central Park, but they are dropping change in his guitar case. Part of Chris wants to duck his head, slide past, and just get home, but he can’t.

 

He waits until Darren finishes his song before calling out to him. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

 

The smile that Darren gifts him is brilliant and utterly guileless. “Mr. Colfer!  Didn’t realize you bought tickets to my little show.”

  
“Oh you’re charging for this?” Chris glances around.  The floor beneath their feet is stained and cracked and puddles are forming everywhere as passengers bring the shitty weather into the station.  “Is there a VIP room?”

 

Darren laughs.  “Yeah, but it’s like, super secret.”  Chris lifts an eyebrow at him.  “So secret _I_ don’t even know where it is.”

 

Chris just shakes his head.  It doesn’t seem to matter how ridiculous the things that come out of Darren’s mouth are, somehow he gets away with it. “Well.  You enjoy finding your super secret VIP party.” Chris turns to head for the platform.

 

“Wait!” Darren calls out and Chris pauses on a breath and a half-step. 

 

“What?”

 

“I’ll come with you.”

 

“What?” Chris repeats, but Darren is already packing up his guitar with practiced efficiency.

 

“It’s not like we aren’t catching the same train,” Darren says as he falls into step next to Chris, shoulders brushing together as they avoid bumping into people.

  
“Yeah,” Chris agrees, lamely.  They move a ways down the platform, to where the crowd has thinned out, to wait for the next train.

 

“So,” Darren says, conversationally. “What brings you out on a day like this?”

 

“Work stuff,” Chris replies. 

 

“I thought you did all your work from home.”

 

“I do.  But sometimes I have to go to meetings with my agent.  I’m not a total hermit,” he adds, unnecessarily.

 

“Didn’t think you were.”  Chris doesn’t know him well enough to be able to tell if he’s lying.  “How’d it go?”

 

“What?”

 

“Your meeting.”

 

“Oh.”

 

It didn’t go well at all.  His agent wants to know why he has so little to show for the time that’s passing.  The last thing Chris wants to tell her is that he thinks maybe he ran out of words. Or worse, that he was a fraud from the very beginning.

 

“It was fine,” Chris chokes out.  He can still see the concern etched across his agent’s expression as she listened to him struggle to explain himself.

 

Darren’s eyes are sharp on his face, terribly knowing. “You don’t have to lie to me, you know,” he says, like those are words people just _say_ to one another.

 

Chris’ back stiffens. “I’m not lying. It was a meeting. It went fine.”

 

Darren holds his hands up in the most obvious kind of surrender and Chris is saved from saying anything more by the arrival of the train.

  
The shitty weather has forced everyone underground and the train is already packed when Chris and Darren push their way into a car. With barely enough room to stand, they end up pressed tight together, feet tapping they shuffle for balance and Chris wants to laugh.  He has to reach up and grab a railing for purchase and he can feel Darren’s stomach against his own every time he breathes and it’s so fucking absurd he’s half expecting to wake up at any moment.  He can smell Darren’s cologne and that isn’t as funny.

 

He’s a writer – he knows clichés.  He knows what happens when two people meet in a café or reach for the same book in the library or accidentally take the wrong coat. For better or worse he’s even used them now and again, but this is not one of his books, this is not a scene in a movie, and Chris cannot stop grinning despite himself.

 

But Darren is smiling too, looking down at his shoes, which are right against Chris’.

 

This close Darren’s hair is ridiculously shiny, for as messy as it is, and he’s smaller that Chris expects, fitting in the narrow space between Chris and some woman with a huge backpack.  His eyelashes are long, sweeping against his cheeks as he blinks, and Chris has to look away.

 

“Sorry,” he mutters, when the train shudders to a halt at the next stop.

 

“For snapping at me for asking about your day?” Darren tilts his head back, looking at up Chris, and even under the horrid florescent lights his eyes are a remarkable splash of color.

 

“I…” Chris swallows.  He hadn’t really meant to apologize for anything at all, but the word had felt right in that moment.  “Yeah.”

 

“Accepted.”

 

The doors close and the train jerks forward, sending Darren unsteadily into Chris’ chest before he regains his balance and that time Chris does laugh.  Darren’s body is firm and soft and Chris has not been on date in years.

 

“Ridiculous,” he mutters to himself, but Darren is close enough to catch it, even over the roar of the train hurtling towards the next station.

 

“Is it?” Darren blinks, slowly, and Chris has no answer for that.  The moment is what it is, absurdity and all.  He loses the rest of the train ride to his own thoughts.

  
He doesn’t know Darren.  Not really.  But he knows himself. He knows he prefers to be alone than with someone else and he knows that he buries himself in his work rather than dealing with the rest of the world.

 

But Darren follows him out of the train when he gets to his stop. Of course he does, Chris realizes immediately, they’re going to the same place after all.

 

“What was your first book about?” Darren asks when emerge from the subway and out onto the street, and he holds his hands up at the look Chris gives him.  “I know, I know, I haven’t read it.  My apologies.  My book club read _Steel Magnolias_ last month.”

  
“That’s a movie.”

 

“And a play.  So, what’s it about?” Darren bumps Chris’ shoulder with his own as they walk and somehow Chris knows it isn’t an accident.

 

“It’s uh, it’s about a young girl who gets transported to a strange land.”

 

Darren hums. “So, _Wizard of Oz_.”

 

“No,” Chris snaps and then tries to smile in apology. “I mean.  I guess, technically.  There really are only seven basic plots in literature.”

 

“And that’s the one you went with.”

 

Chris can feel himself bristling, his hackles rising in protest.  “I didn’t _go_ with it.  It’s what I wanted to write.”

  
“Why?” Darren asks.  
  
“Why what?”

 

“Why is _that_ what you wanted to write?”

 

Chris almost stops in the middle of the sidewalk, realizing then that he’s never said a thing about his sister to Darren, about why he writes in the first place.  There is no good time or place to tell someone that a career path began with a death, so Chris just does it, right there on a dark and dreary afternoon in November.

 

“My sister died,” Chris says, and he does not miss the way Darren’s whole body goes tense, how his eyes slide towards him as they continue to walk to their apartment buildings.  “She loved stories and when she died, well, I didn’t want those stories to die with her.”

  
Thankfully Darren does not tell him he’s sorry.  He’s heard the word too many times to make sense of it and too often it means nothing anyway.

  
When they turn the corner at their street, Darren hops up onto the step leading to the front door of his building, his guitar case banging against his hip. It puts him just taller than Chris, who’s grown rather used to looking up at him.

 

“Thanks for walking me home, man.” Darren grins, brightening the gloom of November.

 

Chris can tell he’s blushing to the tips of his ears. “Shut up.”

 

“I mean it. I like talking to you, even when you’re usually telling me to be quiet.”

 

“Well, you _are_ rather loud.”

 

“Only compared to you.”

 

Chris realizes that this is the moment he could invite Darren into his apartment, when they could keep talking.  He could make then tea or coffee or whatever it is Darren likes to drink.  His apartment might be bare, but his couch is comfortable and they could sit and talk and Chris is so sure it wouldn’t be unbearable.

 

But before the words are fully formed on Chris’ tongue, Darren is digging his keys out of his pocket and turning towards his weathered front door.

 

“Hey.” Darren turns back, stopping Chris from moving the ten feet to his own apartment. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

 

“What?”

 

Darren cocks his head, eyebrow questioning. “Thanksgiving. It’s this Thursday. So, Happy Thanksgiving.”

 

Chris has almost forgotten even though he has a flight home Wednesday morning.  “Yeah, thanks.  You too.”

 

Darren grins, tips a hate he is not wearing, and disappears inside.

 

***

 

Somehow Chris is not surprised to see a piece of construction paper with a hand-turkey drawn in Sharpie taped to the outside of his window when he gets home from the holidays.

 

***

 

There’s a bar on Third that Chris doesn’t hate going to.  It’s quieter than most and the floors aren’t completely sticky.

 

He meets a couple friends there for drinks on a Friday night.  They’re decent enough people, with kindness in their eyes, but they all have steady jobs in offices with health benefits and 401(k) plans and Chris doesn’t always know how to relate to them.  When the conversation turns to complaints about paid time off and a boss who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “weekend,” Chris slips away to the bar to get another round.

 

A little crowd has gathered and Chris leans against the counter to wait his turn.  He’s staring at the on-tap menu and doesn’t notice the man sidling up next to him until an elbow brushes against him.

 

“Hey.”  The guy has light hair and patchy stubble and is not who Chris was somehow expecting in the breath of time between the touch of the elbow to when he saw the guy’s face.

 

“Hi,” Chris responds, because he’s supposed to.

 

“Can I buy you that drink you’re waiting on?

 

“Haven’t ordered anything yet.”

 

The man’s body turns towards Chris, hip angling against the bar counter. “Then what can I get you?”

 

Chris doesn’t have a chance to brush this guy off before he’s flagged down the bartender with a casual flick of his wrist.

 

It’s been so long since anyone tried to pick him up at a bar that Chris has almost forgotten how it works.  But the way the guy throws down a 50% tip and watches Chris over the rim of his glass has takes a sip is distressingly familiar. He didn’t like this in college and he doesn’t like it now.

 

“So, what’s your name?”

 

Chris remembers the disapproving look on his sister’s face when he’d gone out with a guy senior year of high school.

  
“Where are you going?” She’d asked, arms folded across her chest.

 

“Out.”

 

“With who?”

 

“Someone.”  He’d worn a tie and it had been too tight around his neck.

 

“Which guy?”

 

“What with the interrogation, Detective Colfer?”  


“Is he good enough for you?” His sister had sniffed.

 

Chris had rolled his eyes and ruffled her short, messy hair as a car horn honked out in front of house.  “Don’t grow up on me anymore, okay?”

 

That date had been fine and this guy standing too close at the bar is probably fine too, but his hair is light and his eyes are brown and Chris isn’t interested.

 

“Thank you for the drink,” Chris says, when he’s had enough of it to not look completely impolite.  “But I should get back to my friends.”

 

The guy – Greg – has told him about his (CPA) and the school he went to (Columbia) and his apartment on the Upper West Side (pre-war) and it’s all Chris needs to know about him.

 

“Stay and talk to me.” Greg touches Chris’ wrist with fingers that are cool from his glass and anger laces up Chris’ spine.

 

“I really appreciate the drink,” Chris allows through carefully unclenched teeth.  “But I’m here with friends and I should get back to them.”

 

Greg gives him a peevish, but resigned look before sliding over his card. Chris takes it, knowing he’ll never look at it again, and finally escapes back to his table.  He can still see Greg glancing over at him from time to time.

  
Chris has two more beers and not enough food and he does not protest when his friends finally shove him out of the bar and into a cab.

 

When he gets home, he can hear a soft melody creeping in through the slightly open window as he locks up behind him. It’s a sweet tune, gently relaxing, and Chris leans his forehead against the cool wood of the door for a long moment, savoring it.

 

He kicks off his shoes and sinks down onto the sofa, dragging the blanket over him.  He should get into his bed, with his nice sheets and pillows, but he can’t hear Darren’s guitar from his room.  His cat saunters out of the bedroom and finds a spot on the couch behind Chris’ knees, purring contentedly as Chris closes his eyes.

 

Chris falls asleep to the sound of Darren humming softly into the cool night.

 

***

 

He does not leave the apartment the next day and has food delivered to his door.

 

But he writes three new pages and sends his parents a long email.

 

***

 

Sera drags him to a show in SoHo a week later, saying her friends are playing a set and she wants to see them, but Chris is pretty sure she’s worried he’s not getting enough fresh air.  Only occasionally does Chris worry the same thing.

 

He’d rambled through the Park all week, looking and not looking for Darren along the pathways, but he never saw him. And only once did Chris hear the sound of Darren’s ukulele echoing from the fire escape, but when he’d gotten up to look, Darren had already gone back inside, leaving behind the faint, acrid stench of weed.

 

“The new pages are better,” Sera says with no preamble as they show their IDs at the door.

 

“Uh, thanks.”

 

“Think you’re coming out of your slump?” Sera also refuses to utter the words ‘writer’s block’ and Chris appreciates her all the more for it.

 

“Maybe, I don’t know.”  It’s the most he can offer.  What he knows is that sometimes he has words to put down and other days there are none.

 

“Want something to drink?” Sera asks as she leads them over to the bar.  The venue is tiny, but packed, and the band on stage is one of the better ones Chris has heard. From this far back he can’t quite see the stage over the heads of the crowd, but the woman singing has an incredible voice.

 

“Not tonight,” Chris demurs.

 

“Your loss.” Sera grins, all white teeth and red lipstick, before turning to get the bartender’s attention.

 

The crowd shifts and suddenly Chris has a clearer view of the stage.  Off to the side, unobtrusive yet undeniably compelling, is a man playing the guitar. He has messy hair and warm skin and Chris’ jaw hits the floor.

 

“Well there’s some inspiration for you,” Sera leers, nudging Chris with her elbow.

 

“I – he’s my neighbor,” Chris says because it’s all he can come up with.

 

Sera’s eyebrow does not hide her curiosity. “Is he now? Interesting.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Sera fades away and then the crowd does too until all that is left is Darren on that stage.  Strong hands and broad shoulders and wearing a ridiculous t-shirt that Chris can’t quite make out in the dim lighting.  But he is absurdly happy up there, that much Chris can tell.  His face is honest and open and his eyes are bright underneath the stage lights.  When he sings his parts his throat strains with the effort and even the lead singer can’t keep her eyes off him. Neither can Chris.

 

When Darren’s gaze finds his through the crowd, it’s all Chris can do to lift a shaking hand in greeting instead of turning and running.

 

The wide, toothy smile that breaks across Darren’s face makes Chris’ stomach hurt in the sweetest way.

 

“A _neighbor_ , huh?” Sera prods, voice thick with amusement and Chris just blushes even more.

 

It must be the band’s last song, because when it’s over, the group takes a bow to deafening applause and then gets to work breaking the set down for the next act.  Chris wants to leave and he wants to stay and he already knows he’ll have no idea what to say to Darren should he come over.

 

Liking the guy or not liking him isn’t the problem. He doesn’t _know_ Darren, doesn’t know anything about him. And the thought of potentially finding something out about him that he won’t like gives him pause.  But Darren left him a pumpkin on his windowsill for Halloween, and a ridiculous drawing of a turkey for Thanksgiving, and even Chris knows that’s _something_.

 

The choice to leave or stay is taken from him when Darren comes pushing through the crowd, heading right for him. Chris is always struck by how small Darren really is as he weaves through bigger bodies, taking quick moments to shake hands and give out hugs.  They look like good hugs.

 

“Hey!” Darren calls out to him.  There’s sweat gathered in the hollow of his throat and dotted along his collarbones and his thin t-shirt is sticking to the planes of his chest.  Chris swallows.

 

“Thanks for coming!” He’s bouncing on his toes and flexing his hands like he wants to reach for something.

 

“I didn’t come here for you,” Chris says before he can bite it back.  It wasn’t what he means at all, but Darren just grins.

 

“You’re still here.”

 

Chris nods.  “I am.”

 

“What’d you think?”

 

“I – I didn’t get to see it all, but it was good. You’re good.”  Chris is supposed to be good with words, but he isn’t really and that’s the best he can come up with.  He hates having to yell over the din of the crowd just to be heard.

  
Darren just keeps smiling.  “Thanks.  It’s a lot of fun, and the guys – well, the guys and gals – are amazing.”

 

“Is that your band?”

 

“My band?” Darren cocks his head and then laughs. “Oh, fuck.  No.  I mean, they’re a band, but they’re not _my_ band. I just play gigs with them sometimes.  When they’re in town and need another guitar. They’re old friends from school.”

 

Chris swallows.  There’s so much about Darren he doesn’t know.  “That’s cool.  That you’ve stayed in touch.”

 

Darren shrugs carelessly.  “We all like to jam.  It works out.  Hey. I’m going to grab a drink.  Can you stay a bit?  Talk? It’s loud in here, but I know a place backstage that’s a little quieter.”

 

Chris glances back, to where he thinks Sera had been standing, but she’s gone.  When he looks around, he thinks he can see her hair somewhere off in the distance.

 

“Sure,” he says finally.  “I’d like that.”

 

Darren’s smile is so bright it hurts. “Great.” He rests a warm, heavy hand on Chris’ shoulder for a brief moment and Chris feels it in his bones. “Lemme just get a drink. You want anything?”

 

“Oh, that’s ok, I-”

 

But Darren is already sliding his way towards the bar. Chris’ shoulder goes cold where Darren’s hand once was.

 

The place Darren knows is really just a dim hallway leading to the backstage entrance.  The heavy metal door is propped open for the bands to wheel their gear in and out, but the hallway is deserted save for the two of them.  Chris can hear the muffled sounds of the next act coming through the thick walls.

 

“So,” Darren begins. He’s leaning against a wall and Chris is not looking at the exposed skin between his low-slung pants and his t-shirt. “What brought you out tonight, if it wasn’t me?”

 

Chris looks down at the drink in his hands. Darren had brought him a whiskey sour without ever knowing Chris liked it. “My editor.”

 

“The woman you were standing with?”

 

“Yeah. Sera.  She’s, well, she’s something.”

 

Darren makes a noncommittal sound.  “Does she help you with your books?”

 

“In some ways,” Chris nods.  “In a lot of ways, actually.  Probably more than a lot of editors out there.” He has to remind himself to get her a really nice Christmas gift this year, for putting up with him all this time.

 

“That’s awesome of her,” Darren says with complete sincerity and Chris agrees with him.  “So, tell me about your second book.” His tone is curious, conversational, but it still makes lead settle in Chris’ stomach.

 

Chris shakes his head.  “It was terrible.”  He’s long come to grips with that truth.

 

“I don’t believe that.”

 

Chris snorts.  “They said it _lacked heart_.”

 

Darren winces. “Oh.  Harsh.”

 

Chris shrugs.  He has whole paragraphs of reviews memorized.  And try as he might he cannot forget them. Maybe it’s for the best. “Yeah.”

 

“Did it?” Darren asks.

  
“What?”

 

“Lack heart?”

  
There was a time when Chris would have bristled at the question and maybe even walked away.  But he’s had more than enough time to think of all the things that went wrong with that book. “Yeah, it did.”

 

“So what are you doing about it?”  Darren’s eyes are very intense and the shadows in the hallway make a sharp line of his jaw.

 

“What do you mean?” Chris asks.  The book is written, published, and already cast aside. There’s nothing more he can do about it.

 

“Well, you’re writing your next one, right? So…give this one some heart.”

 

 _I don’t know how,_ Chris thinks.

  
“What’s it about?” Darren asks when Chris’ silence drags on too long.

 

“I – I don’t really know.”  For all the note cards on the corkboard in his unused office, Chris has no idea where this thing is going.  It exists on his computer as a scattering of ideas, tenuously strung together across the pages.  It’s not enough.

 

“So, maybe you should figure that out.”

 

“If it was that easy I would have,” argues Chris.

 

“I’m not saying it’s easy.”

 

Chris bites his lip and looks down at his half-empty glass. “I’m trying.”  Sometimes he thinks of deleting everything he’s written so far and starting fresh. The thought is at once exhilarating and terrifying and he pushes it away like he always does.  He doesn’t have the luxury for such things.

 

“Well, thank you for the drink,” Chris says and Darren nods. His face has gone serious and Chris hates that he put that look there when before Darren was so exuberant, so full of joy. “I’ll uh, I’ll see you around.”

 

Darren’s lips are a firm line as Chris begins to step away, eager to return to the emptiness of his apartment and a cat that does not question the direction of his life, but hating to part from Darren.

 

“Hey.”

 

Chris turns back, called inexorably by the soft sound. He hasn’t time to breathe before strong arms are around him, holding him in a close hug.  The last person to hug him was his mother, at Thanksgiving, but it was nothing like this.  Darren is all hard muscles and softer places and his chin hooks over Chris’ shoulder like it belongs here.  Chris buries his nose in the sweat-damp hair behind Darren’s ear and he breathes.

 

“If you need inspiration,” Darren says, low and private even though they’re alone.  “I’ve got some stories to tell.”

 

Chris snorts. “Oh, do you?”

 

“I think you should make me a character in your next book.” Darren’s big hands rub slow circles against Chris’ back, the touch undeniable.

 

“Should I?”

 

Darren leans back and even though his hands stay on Chris’ waist, Chris misses his warmth.  “I wrote a song for you,” Darren says conspiratorially.  “The least you could do is write me into your book.” In the dark lighting, Darren’s eyes are the same color as the whiskey he was drinking before and Chris has never wanted to kiss someone quite so badly before.

 

“You did not,” he says instead.  His heart is fluttering rapidly in his chest and he’s sure Darren can feel how heavily he is breathing now.

 

“I did.  Perhaps I’ll play it for you some day.”

 

Chris just nods, unable to think of a damn thing to say.

 

“I hate to do this, but I kind of have to get going,” says Darren, apologetically.  “The guys are having a post-gig thing in Brooklyn.  Do you want to come?”  His face is full of hope and Chris thinks about it.  About following Darren to Brooklyn, spending the night with him and his friends, and what it all might mean for later.

 

But he shakes his head.  “I can’t.”

 

Darren’s smile is soft, but not annoyed. “You have to work.”

  
“No, but I want to.”  Chris thinks he might not have a problem with inspiration after all. “Another time?”

 

“Yeah, man,” Darren answers brightly and Chris wonders what it takes to make him truly upset.  “I do know where you live, so.”

 

Rolling his eyes, Chris slips from Darren’s hold and feels all the colder for it.  “Goodnight,” he says and Darren squeezes his wrist before letting him go.

  
Sera is long gone when Chris steps outside, having left him a vaguely inappropriate text.  Chris laughs – at her, himself, and the whole night.  The imprint of Darren’s hands at his waist remain warm the entire walk home, even when snow begins to flurry in the dark sky.

 

***

 

Chris sleeps in the next morning, as long as his cat will let him. Eventually Brian voices his hunger loudly from the bedroom doorway and Chris drags himself out of bed.

 

He writes a grocery list, picks up food for Brian, and then calls his parents, even though he just saw them at Thanksgiving.

 

He doesn’t write, but it’s a good day.

 

***

 

When Chris was sixteen he had his wisdom teeth taken out.  The dentist said the molars were coming in perfectly healthy, but that there just wasn’t enough room in his jaw for them.  If they weren’t removed they’d shove the rest of his teeth out of alignment and hurt a whole hell of a lot in the process.

 

And right now writing feels a little like that. He’s had some good days in the last month – some really good days – but he’s also had some terrible ones and today is a terrible one. Every awful word feels pulled from him, scraped unwilling from his marrow and he can tell even as his fingers type the letters that they’re all wrong.  It leaves him tender and bruised where no one can see and hating every moment of it when this is the one thing he’s supposed to love.

 

Chris has been sitting at his computer for hours, typing and deleting and then typing again before getting up to pace around the apartment while his cat judges him from the couch.  He’s had three cups of tea in the last two hours and not enough food in the last two days.

 

He’s just sat down again, prepared to drag another paragraph out of him before he gives up for the night, when music starts up from somewhere outside.

 

“Not today, Darren,” Chris grumbles to himself, dragging his fingers through his hair before shaking his wrists out. The screen in front of him is half-filled with text but Chris’ll be damned if he can remember a single word of what he wrote.

 

He’s not sure what he’s _trying_ to write.

 

Raucous laughter and slurred swearing breaks through the silence and Chris jumps.  He’s pushed away from his desk and striding to the window before he knows it.

 

“Oh my god can you shut the fuck up for once?!” He shouts the last words right at Darren.  But there is no guitar in his hands.  No ukulele.  No beer bottle clanging.  Just a guy sitting on the fire escape wrapped up in a coat playing with something on his phone.

 

“What the fuck?” Darren’s voice is different, colder that it’s ever been, and Chris shivers.

 

“Sorry, I just – I thought-” Chris rubs at his eyebrow where a nasty headache is forming.

 

“Thought what?  That I was out here causing a racket?  Disturbing your precious writing time?”

 

Chris cannot deny it and the shame of it tastes like bile.  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

 

“Yeah, you did.  You meant exactly that because your very first thought was that it had to be me.  No one else in this city would possibly make a little noise.  No way.  Only the asshole next door who purposefully tries to make your life a living hell.” Darren stands up, his hands tense at his sides. “Yeah, I get it.  I guess I now know _exactly_ what you think of me.”

 

Of all his faults, not reacting well when confronted with a hard-to-swallow truth is one of Chris’ worst.  And this night is no different.  “Don’t act like you know anything at all about me,” he snaps instead of saying _I’m sorry_. “You don’t.”

  
“I think you’re a man who doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Darren says and the friendly guy who plays music for change is completely gone, replaced by a man Chris has never met before.

 

“And I think you’re one who’s trying too hard to pretend like he does.”

 

Darren laughs, but the sound falls flat. “The last fucking thing I would pretend is that I know what the fuck I’m doing.  I don’t.  I really fucking don’t.”

 

“What a luxury for you.  Being able to sit out here doing nothing.”

 

A muscle flickers in Darren’s cheek as his jaw clenches. “Yeah, and you’re doing so much more inside your little cave.  When was the last time you got out and saw the world?  When was the last time you really _lived_?”

 

Chris’ heart is pounding in his chest, painful in his throat.  “And you need to take a little responsibility for your life. Not everyone gets to grow up with rich parents.  Not everyone just gets things handed to them.  Some of us have to work for the little we do get.  You do know what work is, don’t you?”  It’s a low blow and one that Chris viciously wants to land.  And the stunned look in Darren’s eyes tells him it hit hard.

 

“I’m not going to apologize for how I live my life,” Darren grits out.  His cheeks are flushed an ugly red. “Or where I came from.”

 

Chris spreads his hands out.  “I’m not asking you to.  But for once maybe try and remember that not all of us have it the same as you do.”

 

“Who cares how I have it?  I’m doing what makes me happy, what makes me want to get up each and every day.  Can you even say the same?”

  
“That’s such bullshit.” Chris voice feels raw in his throat. “What makes your way of living so much more valid than mine?  At least I’m trying to make something of myself. What are _you_ doing?”

 

Darren’s teeth click as his jaw snaps shut and the shame of what Chris said hurts like sharp stones in his own belly.

 

“I earned this for myself,” Chris grits out. “And I could lose it at any time.”

 

“The fuck does that mean?”

 

“Why do you think this book is so important to me? Why do you think I hole myself up in this cave?  Why I don’t waste my days in the Park or the fucking subway?” Chris’ hands are gesturing wildly and he can’t stop them.  “This thing _has_ to be good. It has to be better. It has to _sell_.  This is how I make money.  This is how I live. If it doesn’t sell I don’t pay rent, I don’t pay my bills.  Not everyone has daddy’s wallet for a backup.”

 

Darren fists are clenched at his sides and his knuckles are white.  “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”

 

“Yeah, I do,” Chris counters before he can stop the words.

 

“Is that so?”

 

Chris knows he’s long gone past acceptable, past mean and cruel, but he can’t take it back now.  What’s done is done and the words hang like winter ice between them.

 

Darren’s lips press together in a thin line before he nods curtly, turns on his heel, and disappears through the window without another syllable. The slam of the pane punches the air from Chris’ chest and pushes his heart into his ribs.

 

His hands are shaking, breath short in his lungs, and all Chris can do is return to his desk, to his open laptop, and stare at the same page he’d be worrying at just before he opened his goddamn mouth and ruined whatever tenuous thing they might have started.

 

No words come then either.

 

***

 

Chris doesn’t want to leave his apartment the next day. What he wants is to wallow in his misery, wrapped in his blankets with his cat and watching terrible TV. But he’s expecting a check from his publisher and despite everything else he said to Darren, what is true above the rest is that he has to pay his rent.

 

He shuffles down to the lobby, aware that he looks a pathetic mess with his unbrushed hair and his too-big pajama pants. At least the grandmother in 2B is the only one there to see him.

  
Chris thinks her name is Mrs. Kravitz and the look she gives him is equal parts amused and concerned.

 

“You might want to bring your next lover’s spat indoors,” she offers, one pale eyebrow lifted as she gathers up her own mail in her arthritic hands.

  
It takes a moment for it to register and when it does, Chris flushes halfway down his chest. “No.  I – we -”

 

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, dear boy,” Mrs. Kravitz tuts. “My granddaughter is like you.  Well, you know what I mean.”

 

Chris bites his lip.  “I’m sorry you had to hear…that.”

 

“Fighting means you care,” she says. Her eyes are pale too, but clear when she looks into his face.  “Trust me.  If neither of you cared you wouldn’t have anything say.  It’s good to care about something.”  She pats his hand, smiles, and leaves, moving slowly towards the elevator and leaving behind a stack of magazines.

  
Chris swallows and gives himself a long moment before heading back upstairs.

  
When the door shuts behind him, his apartment is loudly empty. A couch, a TV, and desk don’t make a home.  Whatever plans Chris had had about his new apartment had fallen aside when he’d started writing the second book, and then they’d been forgotten completely after it hit the shelves.

 

For so long it hadn’t mattered.  People didn’t come over to his place and his cat didn’t care what was hanging on the walls or not.

 

But standing there in his nearly empty living room, with the hardwood floor bare under his feet and Darren’s words ringing in his ears, the place is suddenly intolerable.

 

It’s too late for this, but he doesn’t care. He has two bookcases sitting mostly empty against the walls and boxes of books he’d meticulously packed for the move and then never emptied.  Chris starts with the box closest him and rips it open.  There’s no order to his unpacking – he just grabs books at random and shoves them into place on the shelves.  Eventually he thinks he might rearrange them.

 

He and his sister used to reorganize the books in their parents’ house every month or so.  Sometimes it was alphabetical, other times by the color of the dust jacket.  It started as something they did to annoy their mom, who’d once been a librarian and never quite gotten over the adoration of a perfectly arranged bookcase.  And they it became something for them to do together, he and his sister.

 

Chris still has two boxes of books left when the shelves he has are full and he buys another bookcase on the spot, paying to have it delivered the next day.

 

When it’s all done, when all the books are put away and the boxes broken down and the pictures finally hung on the walls where they belong, Chris sits on the windowsill and breathes, still listening for the sound of Darren’s guitar.

 

***

 

Chris was six when he yelled at his sister that he didn’t want her around.  He doesn’t remember it and neither did she, and Chris knows of it only because his parents keep the letter he’d written to her in crayon, apologizing for telling her to leave.  He’d stuffed it in an envelope he hadn’t known how to seal, scrawled his sister’s name on the front, and put it in the mailbox. Chris doesn’t know why his parents kept it, or if his sister ever saw it.

 

He writes Darren a note of apology, in pen instead of crayon, but he has nothing to do with it.  He can’t get into Darren’s building without buzzing in and he’s not completely sure of Darren’s apartment number to mail it. And he’s not going to step out onto his window ledge and attempt to haul himself up onto Darren’s fire escape.

 

If he wants to apologize to Darren, and he does, then he’s going to say it.

 

***

 

Chris has never felt more foolish in his life.

 

He’d put on a nice shirt and pushed his hands through his hair and rehearsed what he thought he wanted to say a hundred times over. And now he’s leaning out of his window, hands braced on the sill, calling Darren’s name into the frigid air.

 

“Darren, come on.  I know you can hear me.”

 

Chris waits, straining to hear any sound coming from Darren’s apartment, and his heart gives a painful lurch when the window finally scrapes open and Darren leans out.  He looks tired, with dark bruises under his eyes and lines around his mouth.

 

“What?” His voice is gruff, clipped.

 

“I’m sorry.” Chris says it quickly because if he tries to say it any other way he’ll fuck it up.

 

Darren is quiet for too long and Chris just wants him to step out on the fire escape.  Or come over.  Anything other than this quiet, dark-eyed stare.

 

“Okay.”

 

“Okay?”

 

A muscle flickers in Darren’s jaw.  “You expect me to just…what?  Turn off being mad at you? Just like that?”

 

No, no he hadn’t.  But he had expected a little more than just a single, uncomplicated word.

 

“No, of course not.”  Chris concedes.

 

Darren sighs and looks down at his hands where they’re gripping the window frame and even from where he stands Chris can see the tension in his knuckles.

 

“Just.  Give me a little bit?  I’m not good at staying mad at anyone and I don’t-” Darren stops and presses his lips together and Chris hates the pained look on his face.  “And I don’t want to stay mad at you. So just…give me a little bit.”

 

Chris swallows past the hard lump of shame in his throat.  “Not that’s fine. It’s fine.”

 

“It’s not,” Darren says as he leans back into his apartment.  “But it will be.”

 

The wooden drag of the window closing again makes Chris shiver.

 

***

 

Chris spends Christmas in New York because his parents decided to take a cruise and when he wakes up on a snowy Christmas morning there is a string brightly colored lights around his window.

 

Peering outside and breathing into the early morning frost, Chris can see an extension cord leading into Darren’s window.

 

He smiles and says “Thank you” as the twinkling lights reflect off his skin.

 

***

 

Chris spends January writing.   There is an ease in his wrists that there wasn’t before.  Sometimes he takes the laptop to the couch and writes with his legs stretched out and Brian sleeping on his shins.

 

It’s not a fixed thing.  Sometimes the works come like fall leaves – in great swirling gusts and slow fluttering wisps.  Other times it’s a steady spring rain that carries him from morning to dusk.

 

He takes down the note cards in his office and puts up pictures torn from magazines that Mrs. Kravitz leaves out in the lobby. There’s no pattern to it, just things that catch his eye – the sharp line of a stubbled jaw, a forest in a moonlit night, the polished top of a grand piano – but the very absence of words gives space in his imagination for his own.

 

It won’t work every time, he knows, but for this novel it’s what needs be.  Chris doesn’t worry that he should have thought of it sooner.

 

It’s quiet, though, and he misses Darren. It snows on and off for a week and the next week it’s so cold that the streets are ice-skating rinks. Going outside to get groceries makes Chris’ chest seize when he breathes in the frost-hung air and he can’t imagine Darren busking in this.  The man lives just on the other side of the wall and one floor up and Chris hopes he’s home safe and warm.  He certainly isn’t out on the fire escape, but Chris listens for him anyway.

 

He hasn’t seen or heard Darren in weeks, but there are still Christmas lights around his window and he is forgiven. It just takes time.

 

***

 

It isn’t that Chris doesn’t realize it’s the middle of February, it’s that the date has never meant anything to him. Especially not now.

 

He’s writing, pouring pages out day by day, and during the in-between hours he goes out with his friends, gets coffee with Sera, and talks to his parents more than he has in years.

 

It’s a dreary and cold day – the kind it’s been all winter – when the slow strum of a ukulele’s strings catches his attention. Hope has had him leaving the window open a crack despite the snow and now his heart thuds in recognition before his brain has a chance to catch up.  Whatever song is being played, it’s beautiful.

 

Chris listens for a moment, lets the deliberate measures fills the space of his home.  He closes his eyes, lets the music fill him too, and then pushes away from his desk.

 

Darren is standing on the fire escape, ukulele in one hand and a bouquet of Sahara roses in the other.

 

“Hi,” Chris breathes out.  It’s snowing and there are flakes in Darren’s hair, melting in his eyelashes.

 

“Hi.”  Darren cheeks are pink with the cold and the jacket he’s wearing can’t be warm enough.

 

Chris just stares for a moment.  The pumpkin. The Thanksgiving drawing. The Christmas lights. The subway right home and Darren thanking him for walking him back. The moment behind the stage at the bar. The stupid things he said in a moment of blind frustration.  Chris can’t help but wonder about all that might have been if he’d met Darren another way.

 

He never knows what to say to Darren and this moment is no different.  “Uhm, what were you just playing?”  
  
Darren glances down at the instrument in his hand.  “Oh, a little bit of this, little bit of that.”

 

“It was good.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Chris cannot speak around the lump in his throat. “Yeah.”

 

“Well,” and Darren smiles, sweet and private. Just for Chris. “I told you I wrote a song for you.”

 

Chris starts to speak, to say any of the things tumbling through his mind, but Darren shakes his head. “Can I say something?”

 

“Sure. Please.”

 

“You’re right,” Darren begins.  “My parents are rich.  But you’re wrong about everything else.”

 

Chris swallows and does not interrupt.

 

“My parents don’t pay my rent,” Darren continues. “I do.  I teach a music course every semester at NYU. And I tutor some kids on the weekends. And I help some friends in the studio and at gigs when they need an extra hand.  I play on the streets because I like it, not because I have to.  And I sit on the fire escape because I like it.”  Darren pauses, and as he breathes, a soft smile graces his lips.  It’s heartbreakingly sweet and Chris aches. He should have asked, just once.

 

“And because you were there.”

 

Chris’ heart hits his throat and he shivers.

 

“I didn’t expect you, but there you were. Telling me off like it was nothing.  And you were in the Park and the subway and that show.  You’re just - this city can be too full and too empty but you’re there.” Darren sets the ukulele down and holds out the roses.  “And I guess I want more of that.  If you do.”

 

Chris should have asked.  He should have asked where Darren was from and what his parents did and what he studied in school.  He should have asked what Darren did on the weekends and what his favorite drink was and why he liked the ukulele. He should have just once asked anything at all about him.  He’d wondered so much and never said any of it aloud.

 

But Darren is there, right there, and his eyes are as bright as Chris remembers from when they met, hopeful in the night and as earnest as anything Chris has ever seen.

 

Of course he wants the same.

 

“Do you want to come inside?” Chris asks and Darren’s smile brightens everything else.

 

“Yeah,” he says.  “I’d like that.”

 

***

 

**Coda – Love on the Lips of You**

 

Darren is lying on the couch in Chris’ living room, picking out notes on his guitar while Brian stares at him from a pillow, when Chris types the last words of the first draft of his third novel.

 

There is no fanfare, no crack of lightning, and no band that plays – just the clatter of keys and Chris’ soft exhalation of relief.

 

He takes his hands away from the keyboard and stares at the little blinking cursor.  He doesn’t quite believe it, but it’s there.  Thousands of words and hundreds of pages - the very salt and bones of him finally put to rest.

 

“You look pleased,” Darren murmurs from the couch. He’s craning his head back and looks ridiculous.

 

“It’s done,” Chris responds, sitting back in his chair. “I mean.  Sort of.  It needs editing and rereading and writing and I have to send it to Sera like _now_ , and she’s going to have notes – so many notes – and then-”

  
Whatever else he was going to say is lost to the warm press of Darren’s mouth against his own.  He hadn’t even realized Darren had gotten up and padded over to him until he felt the touch of that familiar kiss.

 

“Mmph,” Chris mutters against the shape of Darren’s mouth. Darren’s big hands are on his face, long fingers stretched up to his ears.

 

“Shh.  You finished. That’s the important part.”

 

Chris smiles and lets Darren tip his head back to deepen the kiss.  It’s one of the more effective ways that Darren has devised over the last months to pull Chris back from the edge.  “I did.” Tomorrow it will feel real, the accomplishment, the pride; right now it’s just a relief.

 

Darren pulls back to sit on the edge of the desk. “Did you name a character after me?”

 

Chris grins and squeezes Darren’s thigh. “Maybe.”

 

“I wrote a song for you, remember? I think I’m owed a spot in the book.”  Darren’s voice is teasing and his hair is wild and Chris loves him.

 

“Is that so?” Chris asks because he knows it will make Darren kiss him again.

 

“It is.”

 

Chris lets Darren close his laptop and doesn’t mind it all.  The words are out and he knows they’re good.  Better than his first book, he thinks.  The story is there this time, for his characters and for Chris too. Whatever the story became in the end it was for him.  Not for his publisher and not for his readers and not even for his sister.

 

And when he looks around, at Darren’s shoes by the front door and his shirt on the bedroom floor and his guitars scattered around, Chris knows it’s not the last one he has to tell.  And now he has someone else to share the words with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading :)


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